


for bells, for beggars

by feverbeats



Category: The Prestige (2006)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28038492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: The illusion isn't what it looks like. (Three magic tricks.)
Relationships: Alfred Borden/Bernard Fallon, Robert Angier/Alfred Borden





	for bells, for beggars

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S 2020 AND I'M WRITING PRESTIGE FIC, LET'S DO THIS. I wrote thousands and thousands of words of this stuff fourteen years ago and I will not be stopped. Title from "The Blind Leading the Blind" by Lisel Mueller. This is, as ever, a mashup of book canon and movie canon.
> 
> Additional warning: twincest.

_the pledge_

Tonight, Albert is Alfred Borden. He's on stage with Julia and Angier, smiling their little smile, wearing their face, tying the knot with their hands. He's a whole person, plain and simple, understandable to the senses.

So what is Freddie? He lies curled on the floor of their one-room flat, surrounded by pieces of half-built illusions. He's supposed to be their ingenieur today, but he keeps thinking of the stage. When Albert is Borden, does Freddie exist at all? He has to remind himself to breathe.

On stage, Albert's breath catches.

_the turn_

The first thing they make disappear is Juila.

"Which knot did you tie?" Angier demands, and Albert says, _I don't know_ and _I've been asking myself that._ But the things that are true sound like lies.

He loved her. Did Freddie's hand slip because of that, or because she was Angier's wife? Or is Freddie just a nightmare in which Albert is caught, the half of him that does things he would never do?

He's done things with Angier that Albert would never do.

"Which knot did you die?" Albert demands, and Freddie says, "I don't know," and "I've been asking myself that."

When Angier asks Freddie for the first time, he says, "You must not lie to me, Borden."

"I--" Freddie breaks into laughter, low and rough. He's lying from the first word. There is no I. The illusion isn't what it looks like.

_the prestige_

The illusion isn't what it looks like, but there are times when Albert's hand is on the small of Freddie's back and Albert's teeth close over the lobe of Freddie's ear, times when they can't tell where one of them ends and the other begins.

The illusion isn't a magic trick if there's no audience. It's just madness.

_The pledge_

Root is a drunkard and a gambler and an embarrassment. He's a sloppy, low-class, pathetic excuse for a human being. He's everything Angier has learned to loathe, from childhood onward. Angier can barely keep his lip from curling and unmaking their twinship.

Angier is too uncomfortable to spend time with Root outside of shows, even backstage where it's safe. He has other things to do, anyway. Sitting in the back of theaters and watching Borden take himself apart into pieces and put himself together again. He's never been good at hiding emotion, and Angier wants to devour him.

Instead, every night, Angier finds himself devoured. The trick cannot be real. Angier is a rational man, but there's nothing short of witchcraft about Borden. They tangle backstage once. Teeth knocking together in their hurry, the difference between want and rage impossible to grasp. The next night Borden punches him in the face and Angier has to wear extra makeup for a week. It makes him feel insane.

But Cutter and Olivia, they're real life. They keep him grounded. And Root may be disgusting, but he's exactly what he seems.

_The turn_

Root is nothing that he seems.

He was raised in the same town Angier was, not that Angier would ever know. He's not landed or titled, but he's bright enough to blackmail Angier. He's bright enough to do a lot of things, and lately Angier's been drinking as well.

Root's secret is that Angier's secret is far more obvious than it ought to be.

Angier could never figure a trick out by seeing it once. Root, however, could, and Angier's accent isn't that good. When Angier is already pouring money into him, Root decides to provoke him further. He's looking to be free of this madness, anyway.

“What is it _now_ , Root?”

Root smiles darkly and leans on Angier’s desk. "Oh, I was just wondering...what _is_ America like? I’ve never been."

Before Angier can even open his mouth to speak, Root waves his hand and says, "Don’t bother. I’ve been doing accents since you were a little boy." He smiles and lets his accent slide up through the classes until it resembles Angier’s real accent.

"If you tell–" Angier starts after a moment, the light reflecting madly off his eyes.

Root shakes his head. "Please." Angier's not dangerous. Not like that.

Angier sits back, that neat little crease appearing between his eyes. "What, then? More money? I’m not _that_ damn rich."

"A little respect would not go amiss," Root says.

It's Angier's turn to laugh.

_the prestige_

Root comes back once, when Angier has Tesla's machine in hand, and the shows are good. The shows are like nothing on earth. They would take Root's breath away, if he couldn't see the mechanism.

He doesn't find out by watching the show, though. Instead, he follows Angier to his ancestral home, which he was well aware of anyway, and finds the crypt where the prestige materials are being kept.

Angier calls them that. It's sick. If Root were another man, he'd be disgusted. Angier is dangerous, then. Just like that.

Cutter catches him as he's leaving. He heaves a sigh. Another one of Angier's messes to clean up. Root thinks, for a moment, that Cutter's about to shoot him.

"Well then," Cutter says. "Impressed, are you?"

"The place is--" Root waves a hand, indicating the estate. "Quite prestigious, one might say."

Cutter starts violently. "Leave off," he says. "You want money, do you?"

Root is happy to play that part.

_The pledge_

While Angier is in America, Borden’s shows are strange. They are half-shows, twisted and gaunt and stretched over too wide an expanse of space. The world is colder and the theatre darker, and _sometimes_ , Borden is sure he can feel real magic in the air.

Their trick changes, too. It feels more dangerous, more real. The wood of the stage creaks under Borden's feet and he wonders what it really means to be the man in the box. He wonders if there were ever two Bordens at all.

With no Angier around, there’s nothing to separate the twins, nothing to draw Freddie away from his brother. To be honest, Freddie can’t even tell the difference between himself and Albert anymore. Sarah can. Olivia can’t, not yet.

Albert throws the top hat in the air with a laugh which is like bells and Freddie catches it, puts it on. A pledge and a turn. They lack only the prestige to complete them.

_The turn_

Borden shouts at himself, they shout at each other, You tried to save him, after Julia? Yes, especially after Julia! You started all this, which damn knot did you tie? It's come full circle and you've got what you wanted I got what I wanted we got--

And then there is only Alfred, standing in front of Angier in a basement full of dead bodies.

"It wasn’t for the audience, was it? It wasn’t for the bloody look on their faces. Tell me. Why did you do it?" Albert’s breath hangs in the air, an unpleasant reminder that he is still living.

Angier smiles faintly. "I did it for the prestige."

And somehow Albert doesn't kill him.

_the prestige_

When Albert wakes up in the morning, his body aches all over. There are bruises on his neck where a noose would fall, but he was expecting that. He thinks he would expect anything, at this point. Jess is asleep in bed, somehow untroubled.

Angier wakes up alive. The windows have all blown open in the night and he's shaking so hard he can't stand at first. Cutter is gone. Everything is gone. Not even Root or Olivia remains behind to laugh at him. That, too, is predictable.

But there is something else. Someone pressed a ghostly kiss to Jess's forehead in the night. He was always good with her. Someone opened each and every window of Angier's house to let the cold in. They haven't seen him yet, but they will.

And these, _these_ are the prestige materials. The building blocks from which the next stage of the trick will be built. The pieces start to move and the next pledge is made.


End file.
